SHAS­TRI BOODAN

For­eign-used car deal­ers want the Gov­ern­ment to re­duce tax­es on for­eign used hy­brid cars. Visham Bab­wah, pres­i­dent of the T&T Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA), said his as­so­ci­a­tion, along with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of new car re­tail­ers met with of­fi­cials of the en­er­gy min­istry on Mon­day to dis­cuss the im­pact of the in­crease in the price of pre­mi­um gaso­line.

Bab­wah said TTA­DA is in full sup­port of the re­moval of the fu­el sub­sidy and be­lieves the use of hy­brids and elec­tric cars are the way for­ward rather than com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG). Bab­wah said the na­tion is fed up of hear­ing talk of the use of CNG for more than two decades while noth­ing sub­stan­tial has hap­pened.

He said there are on­ly five fill­ing sta­tions for CNG in Trinidad and none in To­ba­go. Bab­wah said there is a lack of in­fra­struc­ture for CNG and the Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to put down 40 sta­tions for the fill­ing of CNG which might take more than a decade to com­plete.

"What will hap­pen in the mean­time?" Bab­wah asked. He said even the Min­istry of En­er­gy has a hy­brid car that burns 60 per cent less fu­el. Bab­wah said hy­brids are the car of choice in de­vel­oped coun­tries and of­fer an im­me­di­ate so­lu­tion to the prob­lem of ex­ten­sive fu­el con­sump­tion.

Bab­wah said he has sold four for­eign-used Hon­da Civic hy­brids at a cost of $130,000 each and con­sumers were de­mand­ing more.

Bab­wah said a hy­brid has an elec­tric bat­tery life of 15-20 years and is ex­treme­ly re­li­able. He said a tax cut for used hy­brids would see peo­ple switch­ing to these ve­hi­cles un­less the Gov­ern­ment de­cides to con­tin­ue with its agen­da to im­pose CNG on­to mo­torists.

He said cars do not come down from Japan with CNG ap­pa­ra­tus in­stalled be­cause it's il­le­gal to do such in­stal­la­tions in used ve­hi­cles there.

He said CNG cre­ates sev­er­al prob­lems for the user, in­clud­ing re­duced en­gine pow­er, re­duced dri­ving ca­pac­i­ty on a tank of fu­el and the lack of in­fra­struc­ture for re­fu­elling.

Bab­wah said the own­ers of lux­u­ry SU­Vs, con­trac­tors, yachts and the own­ers of trans­porta­tion fleets should be pay­ing a high­er price for fu­el since they could af­ford it. He said the min­istry must de­vel­op a sys­tem, elec­tron­ic or oth­er­wise, that would see the high end user cough­ing up more cash for diesel.

Au­to­mo­tive Com­po­nents Ltd (ACL), O'Meara Road, Ari­ma, is the on­ly com­pa­ny the Min­istry of En­er­gy has grant­ed a li­cense to to in­stall CNG kits. Neil Fran­cois, sta­tion man­ag­er at ACL, said on Oc­to­ber 1 in re­sponse to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai an­nounc­ing a 44 per cent in­crease in the price of pre­mi­um gas, that ACL in­stalls new se­quen­tial CNG?kits which are com­put­erised.

The se­quen­tial kits, a mul­ti-point fu­el in­jec­tion sys­tem, rep­re­sent the new gen­er­a­tion of bi-fu­el CNG con­ver­sion sys­tem. The kit is made up of var­i­ous elec­tron­ic com­po­nents which can be in­stalled in any ve­hi­cle.

"Any pow­er loss be­tween gaso­line and CNG is neg­li­gi­ble," Fran­cois said.